New Music Tuesday: 3-20-2012

Good tidings everybody! Great news came to my inbox yesterday and I gotsome pretty good news in my mailbox too! Brandi Carlile has a new albumcoming out in June and will be part of a Johnny Cash tribute at Austin CityLimits just a few days before my birthday in April. Brandi, I didn’tget anything for you for your birthday, how did you know what to get mefor mine? She is so considerate. Who’s ready for new tunes? I thoughtso.

Singer-songwriter Jasmine Van den Bogaerde may have aname worthy of being a Gossip Girlcharacter, but this English lass’s wise-beyond-her-years persona makes Dan Humphrey seem immature. Those of you in the U.K. have been able to get their hands on Birdy’s self-titled debut for over six months already; but those of us in the U.S. and Canada can beginadding her gorgeous, melancholic, piano-driven original songs to our playlists alongside her cover of Bon Iver‘s “Skinny Love.”This album is what I imagine FlorenceWelch‘s high school diary would sound if it were being sung by her 15-year-old self. Feel good? No. Sound good? Hell yes.

Album opener “This Time” has got mepsyched on R&B right now. MelanieFiona has a voice bursting with soul and a bit of rasp thattakes her low-pitched vocal lilts to epic baby-making-music levels.Someone over at So You Think You CanDance needs to put “Wrong Side of a Love Song” in their ears andchoreograph a dance in the same vein as Sasha and Twitch‘s incredible “Misty Blue”routine. This is a damn-near perfect album in my book.

Musician Morgan Nagler is a curious combination of electronic and indiefolk rock. I like this album but I can’t say I love it enough to wantto play it front to back and I’ve been having a hard time figuring outwhy. At first I was wondering if her jumping from one genre to anotherwas too jarring for my mood. Listened to one by one with space betweentracks, I’m a big fan of her work. I think what it boils down to, forme, is her vocals. Each song seems to be sung with the same few notesusing the same inflection and while everything else is changing in thebackground, her voice is what ends up sticking out more than anything.My recommendation: Don’t dive in head-first — rather dip your toes infirst and take your time coming back.

Do I think Esperanza Spalding is gorgeous?Absolutely. Is she talented? Without a doubt. Does her music fly overmy head and make me feel inferior for not really “feeling it”? Yup.There’s a reason she took home the prize for Best New Artist at the2011 Grammy Awards and I’m trying really hard to be an eager audiencefor her. The problem is, I just can’t connect with these sounds on apersonal level and even when I do for a second, it changes veryquickly. It reminds me of those times in high school when I would go tothe cafes closest to Northwestern University to do my homework and hopethe other cafe-goers would mistake me for another college student. Tryas I might to pull out a Faulknerbook and look interested, I always ended up writing lyrics to Luscious Jackson songs or pretendingI knew how to draw something other than Fred Flintstone (which continues tobe the only thing I know how to draw). So, there you have it. If youenjoy neo-soul that is also overwhelmingly jazzy, you’ll probably endup enjoying this album very much. I welcome you to school me in thecomments section. You can listen to the entire album over at NPR.

That’s it for this week, my friends! I want to say thank you to everyonewho watched my firstvlog episode last week and didn’t end up throwing their computerscreens out the window. I’ll be back with another one on Friday and foranyone missing my Weekly Women to Listen to columns, I’ll be back withthem soon! Tomorrow I’ll be busy speaking to eighth graders about thewondrous world of music blogging and interviewing. Hopefully I willalso manage to get the whole “stay in school” message across, too.